Picture a boat sitting in a harbor. The engine works. The navigation charts are spread across the helm. The captain even knows exactly where he wants to go.
But the anchor is still down.
That boat isn’t going anywhere.
That image has stuck with me for years — because I see it play out constantly in leadership. Good people, smart people, people with genuinely good hearts and clear goals… who never actually move. They’ve got every intention of getting where they want to go. But intentions without action are just an anchor you haven’t lifted yet.
Let’s be fair: intentions matter. They give us direction. They tell us what we value, what we’re aiming for, what kind of leader — or person — we want to be.
The dictionary defines intention as “a determination to act in a certain way.” A goal or vision that guides your activities, thoughts, attitudes, and choices. That’s not nothing. In fact, a clear intention is the starting point for almost every good outcome.
Think about it this way. Before a construction crew pours a single ounce of concrete, there are blueprints. Those blueprints represent intention — a clear picture of what’s supposed to exist when the work is done. Nobody builds a cathedral by accident. Somebody had to first say, this is what we’re building, and here’s what it looks like.
Your intentions are your blueprints. They matter.
But here’s the thing: nobody has ever moved into a blueprint.
There’s a road that every leader travels. You’ve been on it. I’ve been on it. Most of us have camped out there longer than we’d like to admit.
It’s the road paved with good intentions.
I’m going to build a stronger team. I’m going to get better at delegating. I’m going to be more present with my Family. I’m going to finally get that promotion.
These are not bad thoughts. They’re actually beautiful thoughts. But intentions that stay in your head — they’re just thoughts. Good vibes, even. They don’t build anything. They don’t change anything.
Living intentionally is something else entirely. It requires you to take those blueprints and start pouring concrete.
And honestly, that’s where most people hit the wall. Because action is uncomfortable. Action means committing. It means choosing this instead of that, which also means letting go of some of the other options. It means showing up even when the routine gets boring or the momentum gets hard to maintain.
Here’s what I’ve noticed over the years: the gap between intention and intentional living is almost always filled with drift.
Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy wrote about this so well in Living Forward. They asked the question we all need to answer honestly: Are you drifting through life as a spectator — reacting to circumstances, wondering how you got here — or are you directing it, living with a purpose and mission in mind?
Drift happens slowly. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to drift. It sneaks in through routines that feel safe but go nowhere. It settles in when you stop asking hard questions and just let life happen to you instead of through you.
They describe a progression from drift to shift to lift. I’d add a fourth stage: gift. Because when you finally commit to intentional living — really commit — you don’t just change your own trajectory. You become a gift to everyone around you. Your team, your family, your community. The ripple effect is real.
But you can’t get to “gift” without first stopping the drift.
Here’s where I want to get practical, because this isn’t philosophy. This is Monday morning.
Living intentionally means doing the things that matter to you even when they’re not easy. Especially when they’re not easy. It means the choices you make on a Tuesday afternoon are consistent with the vision you have for your life — not just convenient for that moment.
Contrast that with a GPS that knows exactly where you want to go, but keeps re-routing you around every hill or detour instead of staying the course. That’s drift with a map. It looks productive, but you end up somewhere you never planned.
Intentional living is more like a river that’s been given a channel. The water moves with purpose. It carves a path. It gets somewhere. Rivers that don’t have channels just spread out and become swamps — covering a lot of ground, going nowhere in particular.
Too many leaders I’ve worked with had become swamps. Not because they were lazy. Not because they didn’t care. But because nobody ever taught them how to cut a channel.
If you’re in any kind of leadership role — at work, at home, in your community — this hits different.
Because when you drift as a leader, the people around you drift too. Your team takes its cues from your energy, your focus, your level of intention. A leader who’s just riding the wave creates a team that’s just riding the wave. And teams that drift don’t grow, they just go through the motions.
The good news? The opposite is equally true.
A leader who shows up with Clarity and intention — who makes decisions that are actually connected to a vision, who keeps promises to themselves and others — that leader creates a culture that moves. It’s one of the most transferable things I’ve seen in Coaching over 4,500+ leaders across 19 industries. Intentionality is contagious.
But it starts with you deciding to pick up the anchor.
Here’s the question I want to leave you with. Not to guilt you, but to genuinely invite you to reflect:
In the three most important areas of your life right now — work, Relationships, and your own Growth — are you directing, or are you drifting?
If you’re honest and the answer is “mostly drifting,” I want you to know that’s not a verdict on your worth. It’s just information. And information you can do something with.
Forget what you didn’t do last quarter. Forget the intentions that stayed intentions. Today is a clean sheet of paper.
Pick one area. Name one intention. And then — this is the critical step — name one action you can take before the end of this week that turns that intention into something real.
That’s how it starts. One decision. One action. One channel cut into the ground.
Your good intentions deserve better than sitting at anchor. Let’s get moving.
What’s one intention you’ve been carrying around that hasn’t turned into action yet? Drop it in the comments — sometimes just naming it out loud is the first step.
If you’d like to work through this kind of thing with a group of like-minded leaders, the Headway Huddle might be exactly what you’re looking for. It’s a monthly peer advisory group built for leaders who are done drifting and ready to move.
The post Good Intentions Won’t Get You There — But This Will first appeared on Servant Leadership Coaching | Practical Leadership Development | Doug Thorpe.
